


It's Cold in Himring

by eonwe_s (SerendipitousSong)



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Struck by Lightning, Childhood Memories, Flashbacks, Major Character Injury, Slight Sibling Rivalry, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29158989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerendipitousSong/pseuds/eonwe_s
Summary: Maedhros recalls a thunderstorm from a by-gone age. The burn of rain remains the same.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	It's Cold in Himring

**Author's Note:**

> ✌🏼 I'd say the obligatory "no beta we die like [thing that will make us all laugh]" but this actually WAS looked over.....one time. By someone else...
> 
> :) I do love rain tho

In late summers, even the rain brought a chill. Fat drops of ice water, as if tipped from Manwë's refreshing glass in the midday heat, fell from the belly of night-black clouds to spear with frosty pinpricks. Weather never lent itself to snow, or even delicate bits of flurry dancing before your eyes. It was too _warm,_ if one could call such weather warm. But neither did it deserve the term for summer meant yellow light and sweltering heat and dipping nude into the lake behind his house, desperate to quench his parched skin. Lazy afternoons, when it was hottest, spent indoors waiting for Telperion to wax before meeting his brothers outside in the dark for some mischief. Sleepy mornings trudging down to breakfast after spending hours set aside for rest splashing in fountains instead.

Now, he supposed, summer meant momentary lack of blood-stopping cold. A stutter in the speech and patterns of Himring the Ever Cold. And rain. Horrible, icy, _unending_ rain.

Maedhros shut his eyes, willing (and failing) the rain to cease. For Anar to emerge and warm his old bones and rejuvenate him, for sunlight to pour onto his face and the face of Arda once again. And once again, Himring remained dark underneath the grip of furious summer thunderstorms.

He thought to be grateful for lightning, white hot flashes searching the firmament for the secrets of creation, but that thought was immediately ousted from his mind. In eyes illuminated with light plainer than day, plainer than the misty glittering swirls of the Trees, Maedhros dragged himself back to another time, another storm, another journey, across plains and forests smudged in memory. Time-rusted roads made foggy, like blurry vision to be blinked away when first awakening, bloomed in his mind's eye. And there, finally, he was far for Himring and its frozen dirt and dim skies. And he was far from grateful for the flashes of lightning.

In memory long hung away in dusty rafters to make room for new experiences, Maedhros recalled an instance where he'd saddled his horse under Laurelin's rays, Maglor beside him (though he called him not Maglor, but _Macalaurë_ in those days, teasing his sweet voice in contrast to his father-name.) They were so young, he remembered. Barely of age to attend court with their father on days when Fëanáro deemed it necessary. Maglor, sensitive to touch and bothered by heavy fabric, had shed his voluminous outer robes, casting them to the dirt as if they weren't the finest brocade money could buy, embroidered with gentle white mockingbirds against sapphire blue. They'd curried their horses unaided, for Fëanáro had demanded they be taught any minute skill able to be learned, and Maedhros hung his brother's robe on a peg in the stables.

"You're careless with beautiful things, Macalaurë," he'd laughed, "so spoiled you are by Atar."

Maglor had loosened his hair from its updo, but frowned at the itch of it against his neck. "You're his favorite, yet I'm spoiled? Pah! If you begged for him to snatch a ray from Laurelin's golden light, he'd begin construction of a ladder to reach the firmament," he'd snapped, irritated at the heat and hay and his hair and me, and everything. "And we both know who's _actually_ spoiled of us"

Maedhros had wrinkled his nose at the reminder of baby Curufin, barely of toddling age and the apple of Atar's eye. Though Maedhros was old enough to remember each of his brothers being small, being babied, and being the apple of Fëanáro's eye. Perhaps at one point, he had been doted on so, but it was long ago now and he could not recall those days any longer.

"Once Curvo starts talking back to him, like you and Tyelko and Carnistir, he may change his mind."

Maglor had laughed and mounted his horse with grace, something Maedhros recalled being a bit jealous of. Everything his brother did was beautiful, as if he was a delicate puppet played by an Ainu, pulling strings with precision. "Perhaps he and Ammë will begin on bringing us a new brother to the world, despairing that their sons all lack respect and grace." Maglor had finally popped a small grin.

But it wore away as quickly as it had appeared, like Anar ducking behind a cloud to deny Himring warmth. Maedhros had felt cold then too.

"All their sons but you, it seems…" Maglor ducked his head, and Maedhros shed his own robe, hanging it on a peg beside Maglor's. The crisp white burned against the glare of golden stars stitched into the fabric. He tried to ignore any bitterness heard in Maglor's voice. "They have one perfect son, at least."

"One? One perfect son?" They rode under swirling gold, and Maedhros wondered if eagles soaring through the heavens were tinted with golden ink, feathers tipped with heavenly dust. "If they thought any of us imperfect, Ammë and Atar would have quit making children long ago."

Maglor, then so unsure of himself, as though his immaculate movement and honeyed voice were anything less than the image of Eru, had scoffed. And even such an indelicate sound was enviable, for Maglor was beautiful in all he did. "You are the perfect one. I'm too awkward and forgetful, and Tyelko is fidgety at best, destructive at worst. Carnistir lacks decorum, subtlety, and manners -- though, I suppose we all lack what Tirion calls _decorum."_

It went without saying that such a grievous slight against our education as princes was at the hands of Atar, for only Fëanáro would be so brazen as to bring his sons to court knowing we would break protocol, defying etiquette to speak our minds. We were likened to geese by other elites, brash and rude in our confidence, arrogant and prideful in our words. Maedhros wondered once more in his long lifetime if they had been bred to be noisy and obnoxious.

But like a stone parting the flow of a stream, there was Maglor, graceful and soothing to ruffled feathers when naysayers poured in against Atar's biting, poisonous barbs. Even he, eldest and regarded highly as heir to the throne, educated and master of diplomacy and tact, could not lull a crowd the way Maglor could in those days (and in these days of grey cold, snowcapped mountains to match dreary hearts.) Where courtiers were angered and mouthed foul slander behind cupped hands in richly decorated tea rooms, Maglor had been gracious, batting away their barbed arrows like an annoying fly offering gentle smiles, reassuring them that Fëanáro meant not what he said. And all believed him, swayed by his dimpled cheeks and a voice laced with jewel tones derived directly from the _Ainulindalë._

In his musings, Maedhros had neglected to watch where he rode, and his horse had stumbled over a thorny shrub, whinnying in distress. Beside him, gasping and leaping from his mount like a hero from one of Ammë's watercolor storybooks, Maglor scolded him as if he were an errant child.

"Nelyo! Watch out! You know, usually," he hushed Maedhros' horse, who was like to buck him off in frustration for allowing her hooves and ankles to become a pin cushion, "I envy you. But then I remember how dumb you are!" There was no bite to the insult. It wafted over the eldest brother like the scent of bread mother pulled from the oven for supper; warm and familiar. It was their nature to say careless things, and reply in kind.

"You're the idiot, for envying me is a waste of time. There's nothing desirable of the third Finwë," he joked, perhaps to lighten their stormy dispositions or counter such back-and-forth bickering. "I will see to my horse, for he is limping a little. Let us rest here for a bit."

Thus, Maedhros and Maglor found themselves seated on grass like sponges cut from the seabed, and delivered to Ammë's hand to scrub dishes after supper. He could almost recall them bouncing up and down like children, laughing at how their cheeks bounced along as well and their hair swished in the sweltering breeze. The horses grazed on emerald grasses, green in a manner which made Maedhros wonder if hues could affect moods, therefore explaining his sudden bout of jealousy towards Maglor earlier, when they pricked their ears and looked up into a black horizon. Darkness gathered in the north, where the Trees' light was weak and weather ran more rugged affairs. And it was stretching close, rumbling distantly like unto a thousand drums across a field.

Maglor spoke first. "A thunderstorm. And we're stranded unless I ride hard for help." He seemed uneasy, watching the clouds with disturbed eyes. If Maedhros had not known his brother, his closest friend in all the earth, as well as he always had, he might have called Maglor's eyes haunted. Darkness did that to him. Made him fear.

"Perhaps you should. It is not so long a ride," he tried to soothe, copying the simmer he imagined Maglor have his voice. "We've barely left the outskirts. Look! That there is a farm," Maedhros pointed to a dot close by. "That direction is where Túna lies. You'll be there before I might even blink."

His brother, so confident in hushing throngs of clamoring elite hounds scenting blood, became small again, a baby like Curvo who needs to be held. He had shaken his head and shivered.

"I'll remain with you. Let us wait until this blows over."

In that moment, Maedhros had not known how many hundreds of times he would cast his mind's net so far back into the waters of his memory, fishing this day out from the depths and hauling it to the forefront. Even now, such countless years to the future, where he stands upon a frozen battlement in the rain, he thinks how that day woke him from slumber, or plagued his dreams, or flashed him with piping hot memory, searing enough to halt his teeth from chattering. One could never predict what path they may take. Maedhros stood in the Outer Lands, wishing for sunlight and thinking about times lost. It roiled in his belly, bubbling up like frothy fog or waves wandering up and down the shores.

It plagued him, for he had yet to pinpoint why he snapped violently towards his brother.

"No," he'd groaned, drawing it out lazily like a stretching cat. "Just go, Macalaurë. Quit being a baby about everything."

Maglor had frowned, staring at him as though he had pulled off an opera mask and revealed himself to be their step-grandmother that whole time. "You know how I hate the dark. Please Nelyo, don't make me go on my own!"

He'd stood up abruptly, casting dust into his brother's face in a show of horrible behavior. Immediately he'd felt regret, hearing Maglor cough and sputter. But irritation won his heart, and he snapped. "Just go! I cannot ride your horse behind you, I am too big! And Eru knows what may happen should I leave you here alone, what with you being a lily livered infant! Stars, but you truly _are_ spoiled!" He kicked more dirt for good measure.

"Quit that! That not true! I--I'm not a baby! You know I'm afraid of the dark! Just stop!" Tears began to fall, angry and humiliated, but Maedhros could not stop himself. His jealousy had gotten the better of him then.

"Hmph. I suppose you aren't perfect after all."

Maglor kicked his weak knees, and he stumbled to the ground.

How quickly they'd gone from causal teasing to a fist fight. Maglor tackled him, landing a solid punch to his nose, seated on his chest. He punched and punched, and Maedhros blocked and slapped Maglor's cheek until it was raw. They scrabbled, and the Maedhros of that distant future cringed in the icy rain at how savagely he beat his brother. How savagely his brother beat him.

At last, Maedhros had cast Maglor down, bleeding and bruised, and his knees trembled at the sight of his own brother bearing a blackened eye by his hand.

"Macalau--"

"I hate you!" With those words, drops of frosty rain, chilled by the snowcapped peaks of the Pelóri, spattered on their heads. In moments, it was a downpour, melding tears and blood into a sour cocktail he wipes futilely off his lip. "I hate you, Nelyo," the air grew tense all of a sudden, as if each particle had begun to shake and buzz around them, "and I wish you were--"

There was a flash of blinding white light, and the feeling of being a chicken dunked into scalding water before plucking. His ears registered a snap, earth beneath him cracking and sizzling, and the very air charged with--

\--with lightning. 

He couldn't see. He very being ached. Eyes, ears, head, brains, teeth. All rattling alike to Curvo's toys, shaken bones within the sack of his skin and blood. Blinding pellets of rain struck his face as he lay on his back and Maedhros thought, _is this death?_

In Himring, Maedhros of the future clenched his fist, crushing stone like brittle dirt clumps. The worst bit was about to begin-- the smell.

Burning flesh.

He sat up, feeling his brains jiggle about and something hot ooze from his ears. But nothing had ever prepared him, pampered far from the hand of evil, for blinking away the sky's tears to find that Maglor, his brother, was motionless. Blackened earth sent tendrils of smoke into the heavens where no doubt Manwë and Varda coughed violently. Their nice summer day was ruined by the stench of burning Eldar. Of burning Maglor.

"Macalaurë!" Maedhros struggled to his hand and knees. There was no response. If his head and heart weren't pounding so, he may have thought…

But no. It could not be. He'd shaken his brother desperately. Ice fell in molten shards, soaking them through, but Maglor did not stir. His face was untouched, but underneath his fine silken tunic and velvet cape, his body smoked also. Maedhros was granted a perverse thought, that Maglor was a lamb from Valmar's many fields and farms, smoked on a spit and ready to carve and feed a family of hungry mouths. Such things were horrorific tales, seeded in truth, writ with crude letters in Atar's books of the journey from the Outer Lands -- orcs feasting on the flesh of the Quendi. He wished he'd never crept into Fëanáro's office to steal those tomes. Maglor was no orc's supper.

"Macalaurë, please! You must wake!" Again, there was no grumble, no smack aimed at his cheek for daring to wake him, nothing to betray life, to ease Maedhros' fears that, in his frustration, his last words had been insults, the last touch upon his brother's body to be in violence. "Brother, please! I beg of you, please wake up!"

Nothing. Smoke and ash curled around them. There were tiny flames singing Maglor's fine tunic, now blackened. That rich blue fabric, reminiscent of the deep ocean waves, darkened into crispy, crumbly dust with each tug and jostle. Maedhros ignored these details, willing himself to blink away tears mixed with rain and pat out the fire.

"Please…" he'd never sounded more pitiful.

What of their family, then? Maedhros shuddered to think of Fëanáro's face, blinking silently, blankly, as he processed his eldest son's words -- _"Macalaurë is dead, Atar. I've murdered him."_ \-- only to lock terrible silver eyes with Maedhros, hysteria bubbling to the surface. He'd clench his fist, he'd whirl his back to his heir and renounce him as such, snatch his title and family away with a few words, perhaps send his fist flying into a rage? At what cost? A vase? Maedhros himself? Or, more likely, his knees would wobble, dragging the great Fëanáro to the carpets as if weighed by a ship's anchor, where a brilliant genius would be reduced to a useless puddle. There would be no tears from his father. Only grief. Grief and anger.

_Oh Valar,_ Maedhros had cried in his mind then, when each flicker of flame had been stamped out and both he and Maglor had been drenched to the marrow, and more lightning had threatened them further, _what will Ammë say?_

She would straighten, standing to her full height in her workshop, covered in dust. She'd pull down her glasses and her mask, hands trembling, trying to tug off her gloves to no avail. _"What did you say!?"_ she'd cry. _"What has happened to my precious nightingale, Maitimo!? What have you done!?"_ Nerdanel would brace herself upon her bench, or the wall, doubled over as if the pain of being roasted alive was roiling in her gut. With not a word, she would stare into the Void, weeping, screaming, throwing sharp tools and breaking glass with her bare fists.

_What have I done?_

He did what he could. He gathered his brother in his arms, disturbed nearly to nausea at the pristineness of Maglor's face. His charred body was hot, cooling quickly, though his breathing remained slight. Their horses had scattered; they were alone. Maedhros of the future heard thunder rumble and jumped, feeling as though he was nowhere, neither last not present. He drifted, standing in Himring and sprinting through muddy grassland, over hill and under tree, swallowing rain as it battered his face. It was pain he deserved. He relished the burn.

All the way to Tirion, the eldest brother ran, legs burning and lungs ablaze, hacking coughs from inhaled water and from his fear.

A heavy hand handed on his shoulder, but Maedhros did not jump this time. It was familiar, as known to him as the color of his good eye. When he awoke from his nightmare, he stood upon his fortress. The thunderstorm had let up.

"Maitimo."

He did not dare to turn around.

"Idiot. What are you doing up here. You'll be struck by lightning."

The irony. With a flick of soggy red hair, he turned. "Your humor is lacking."

Maglor did not smile. "I'm not joking. Believe me, it is not poetic or glamourous, like those raunchy novels Carnistir prefers. Come away from here, and change into dry clothes. For all that you're the oldest, you have shit for brains."

The insult made Maedhros' stomach lurch in its similarity to what Maglor has told him under that blackening sky. Now, however, the heavens lightened, their burden of rain given over to the streams and aquifers and lakes. His brother stood upright, leading him away by the hand, and with one last shiver, Maedhros followed.

It was strangely cold that night. Even for Himring.

**Author's Note:**

> :) Did I hurt you? My b
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this, it comes at the cost of the next chapter to Burn


End file.
